Gosha Rubchinskiy Adds Fine Art to His Soccer-Themed Collection

Much of the buzz surrounding Gosha Rubchinskiy’s Fall 2017 menswear collection is about his collaboration with Adidas Football, which he unveiled today at his show in Kaliningrad, Russia. The collection featured plenty of tracksuits — a look that’s stereotypically synonymous with Russian “Slav style” — but it also incorporated a more highbrow aspect of Russian culture by channeling the work of the Polish-Russian artist Kazimir Malevich. Geometric shapes in primary colors danced across a black-and-white knit turtleneck in a look that was meant to evoke Malevich’s Suprematist Composition paintings from the early 1900s. Additionally, an olive green military-trouser-and-shirt set was also reminiscent of Malevich's work, though not his paintings. “It could be recalling the uniform from Malevich’s school in Vitebsk during the early ’20s,” says Xenia Vytuleva, an assistant professor of architecture at Columbia University. “Students were wearing the military chenille suits with their notorious black square knitted on the left arm."

Of course, this isn’t the first time a contemporary fashion designer has referenced the avant-garde painter. For Burberry Fall 2014, Malevich-like geometries appeared on a white leather jacket, while Chanel’s Fall 2003 collection included another riff on the artist’s work in the form of a jacket and a micro shift dress.

For Rubchinskiy’s part, he may have been reminded of Malevich back in November, when he accompanied Kanye West on a tour of a Moscow exhibition dedicated to Alexander Rodchenko. The Constructivist artist turned-photographer was also deeply inspired by Malevich’s work. Wherever the idea came from, Rubchinskiy's splash of fine art provided a fresh break from Russia's ubiquitous tracksuit.